As Apple gears up to shutter its MobileMe service next month, the company has extended its offer of an additional 20GB of free storage in iCloud until September 30, 2012.

Apple offered MobileMe subscribers the additional iCloud storage last year in an effort to convince customers to switch over from the sunset service. Users also received a free subscription to MobileMe until June 30, 2012, the service's last day.

Mac Otakaranoted on Sunday that Apple had extended the additional storage from its original June 30 expiration to Sept. 30. A Frequently Asked Questions page on Apple's website was recently updated to reflect the extension.

"MobileMe members with 20GB of purchased storage receive a complimentary iCloud storage upgrade of 20GB, and accounts with additional purchased storage (40GB to 60GB) receive a complimentary upgrade of 50GB after moving to iCloud. These free upgrades are good through September 30th, 2012," the site read.

After September, former MobileMe customers can either pay to keep the storage or downgrade to the free 5GB iCloud plan. Though it's not exactly clear when Apple revealed the extension, a cache of the FAQ page by Google from April 30 does not include the above paragraph.

Last month, it was discovered that Apple had begun offering free copies of OS X Snow Leopard to MobileMe users still on OS X Leopard. Subscribers could then pay for an upgrade to OS X Lion themselves in order to make the move to iCloud.

Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs took the wraps off iCloud last June and promised that it would be a step up from MobileMe, which he said was not Apple's "finest hour." Since the company launched iCloud last fall, it has attracted more than 125 million users.

Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer revealed last month during a quarterly earnings call that the company considers revenue from iCloud storage plans to be incidental. "Our real desire here was not about selling more storage? We just really wanted to increase the customer delight," he said.

Comments

Why are you waiting for people to say they can't live without their iDisk? Anyone with any concern about that has been going to apple.com/feedback, scrolling down to the bottom, clicking on iCloud, then leaving a request to keep iDisk. I've done it every two weeks since June. What have you done to implore Apple to keep iDisk?

Waiting for people to say how they wont be able to live without iDisk.

I wouldn't say that, but iCloud won't do it for me, either. I need the ability to store my files in one location and access them from anywhere. iCloud only allows documents created from a limited number of apps to be shared. To me, that's a significant loss of functionality and a step backwards.

Since iCloud isn't sufficient, I signed up for Skydrive and am currently moving all my files from iDisk.

Why are you waiting for people to say they can't live without their iDisk? Anyone with any concern about that has been going to apple.com/feedback, scrolling down to the bottom, clicking on iCloud, then leaving a request to keep iDisk. I've done it every two weeks since June. What have you done to implore Apple to keep iDisk?

I've done nothing to keep iDisk because it's horrible and outdated in every way, hence my disdain with people that want this antiquated technology to stick around.

I wouldn't say that, but iCloud won't do it for me, either. I need the ability to store my files in one location and access them from anywhere. iCloud only allows documents created from a limited number of apps to be shared. To me, that's a significant loss of functionality and a step backwards.

All apps have access to the iCloud APIs. Meaning, I see no reason why one can't make Mac and iOS apps that will store any and all hierarchal files and folders, just like iDisk. It could reside as a folder and Menu Bar item just like Dropbox but use Apple's servers for storage. Apple would be very happy to get people to pay for additional data storage.

Even better is using a service that doesn't make you restart the entire UL/DL if you lose your connection right before you finish transporting a large file. It's sad that installing a 3rd-party app adds so much usability and adds to the user experience so much that a built-in, native option is unusable by those that care about speed, security, reliability and redundancy.

Why are you waiting for people to say they can't live without their iDisk? Anyone with any concern about that has been going to apple.com/feedback, scrolling down to the bottom, clicking on iCloud, then leaving a request to keep iDisk. I've done it every two weeks since June. What have you done to implore Apple to keep iDisk?

I personally will miss iDisk and Photo Gallery. Both were well integrated into Mac OS X (if you count iPhoto as part of the OS, which is was since it shipped with every Mac, though you had to pay for upgrades), though the integration with iOS was obviously an afterthought (free apps). I still hope that Apple will offer something like Photo Gallery in a future version of PhotoStream, perhaps by copying photos to a public folder. iDisk is probably never going to happen because Apple appears to be moving towards an iOS-style file storage, which doesn't expose app data outside of the app itself.

But, overall, I think iCloud is the right direction. I'm just going to hold on to MobileMe until the bitter, bitter end: June 29 at 11:59pm.

All apps have access to the iCloud APIs. Meaning, I see no reason why one can't make Mac and iOS apps that will store any and all hierarchal files and folders, just like iDisk. It could reside as a folder and Menu Bar item just like Dropbox but use Apple's servers for storage. Apple would be very happy to get people to pay for additional data storage..

In theory, all apps have access to the iCloud APIs. In practice, only a handful actually use the iCloud APIs.

Furthermore, there's the problem of all the thousands of files I already have. Even if there's an App that supports iCloud that will read each of those files (which isn't the case for many of them), I'd have to open and save thousands of files to make it work. Much easier to simply switch to Skydrive or Dropbox (although with Skydrive, I had to write an AppleScript to change many file names since Skydrive won't accept certain characters like '/'.

Um... why in the world would anybody not be able to live without iDisk? It was a TERRIBLE technology that NEVER worked properly and was SLOW as molasses. People who need that sort of technology have all adopted Dropbox, an OUTSTANDING service from an EXCELLENT & trustworthy company that truly UNDERSTANDS what cloud storage is all about. Apple has YET to prove that they understand ANYTHING about the cloud, after their botched disasters known as iTools, mac.com, and MobileMe. iDisk worked for us maybe 1% of the time. Dropbox works for us 100% of the time, and shows that they have a much sharper set of software engineers than Apple.

Um... why in the world would anybody not be able to live without iDisk? It was a TERRIBLE technology that NEVER worked properly and was SLOW as molasses. People who need that sort of technology have all adopted Dropbox, an OUTSTANDING service from an EXCELLENT & trustworthy company that truly UNDERSTANDS what cloud storage is all about. Apple has YET to prove that they understand ANYTHING about the cloud, after their botched disasters known as iTools, mac.com, and MobileMe. iDisk worked for us maybe 1% of the time. Dropbox works for us 100% of the time, and shows that they have a much sharper set of software engineers than Apple.

Okay, troll. Software engineers =/= network engineers. I would say Apple has some of the best software engineers in the world (just look at their OSes and apps), but I would agree with you that their cloud strategy does need some refining. They have been stepping in the right direction each time. iCloud, imo, is the best option they've had, but I personally never had any issues with MobileMe either.

Um... why in the world would anybody not be able to live without iDisk? It was a TERRIBLE technology that NEVER worked properly and was SLOW as molasses. People who need that sort of technology have all adopted Dropbox, an OUTSTANDING service from an EXCELLENT & trustworthy company that truly UNDERSTANDS what cloud storage is all about. Apple has YET to prove that they understand ANYTHING about the cloud, after their botched disasters known as iTools, mac.com, and MobileMe. iDisk worked for us maybe 1% of the time. Dropbox works for us 100% of the time, and shows that they have a much sharper set of software engineers than Apple.

I'm curious what it is that never worked properly. I had no problems with the parts of MobileMe that I used.

It is a bit slow- slower than Drobox but not as slow as Skydrive. But mirroring it to my desktop solved that problem.

In theory, all apps have access to the iCloud APIs. In practice, only a handful actually use the iCloud APIs.
Furthermore, there's the problem of all the thousands of files I already have. Even if there's an App that supports iCloud that will read each of those files (which isn't the case for many of them), I'd have to open and save thousands of files to make it work. Much easier to simply switch to Skydrive or Dropbox (although with Skydrive, I had to write an AppleScript to change many file names since Skydrive won't accept certain characters like '/'.

You lost me. Why would you need to have save thousands of files? It would be no different than with SkyDrive, Dropbox, SugarSync or Google Drive. You place your files in the "drive", it auto syncs, and then when you click it opens up with the appropriate app that is tied to the file extension.

iDisk simply sucks and was barely on par with other services when it first arrived. its only benefit is OS integration, but there are plenty of 3rd-party utilities that offer almost as much integration. I say almost because you do still need a separate username and password and of course to first install it and update it outside that OS. Besides that small and common hurdle all other alternatives are worlds ahead of iDisk.

Lets look at the major way that iDisk pales in comparison to modern offerings:

Shows up as mounted drive instead of folder(s) you can place anywhere.

No easy way to mix private folders and shared folders. (Used to only get one password to share to users, not sure they added more later on.)

if the WebDAV or FTP connection failed you had to restart the entire sync again. (Work around: RARing a file into small chunks for syncing)

iDisk syncing of data was not encrypted. (Work around: Using Disk Utility to create an encrypted and password protected Disk Image to store files before syncing)

iDisk does not preserve version history for easy corrections. (Adds peace of mind when making changes. Saved for 30 days for free account, and indefinitely for paid account)

iDisk does not preserve deletions for easy corrections. (Adds peace of mind when doing a deletion as it can be reversed for up to 30 days for a free account, or deleted permanently if you choose to just like the Recycle Bin/Trash of an OS.)

iDisk does not allow delta-encodings. (This is how Time Machine, Dropbox, SugarSync, iCloud, and all the ones I know about work. Only the changes are sent thus making that 1GB document that you barely changed sync up almost instantly)

Odd spattering of folders and files on your iDisk which made it confusing and was very un-Apple-like.

No convenient list of "events" to show all changes made, who made them, and when.

Slow, slow, slow.

Now you could say that your wish to keep iDisk isn't to keep it as it is but merely for Apple to have a built in utility that is updated with all those things that make those modern services great. However, I've made this argument before (for both sides) and having an actual useful and modern update to iDisk has never been the argument people make for retaining it.

Um... why in the world would anybody not be able to live without iDisk? It was a TERRIBLE technology that NEVER worked properly and was SLOW as molasses. People who need that sort of technology have all adopted Dropbox, an OUTSTANDING service from an EXCELLENT & trustworthy company that truly UNDERSTANDS what cloud storage is all about. Apple has YET to prove that they understand ANYTHING about the cloud, after their botched disasters known as iTools, mac.com, and MobileMe. iDisk worked for us maybe 1% of the time. Dropbox works for us 100% of the time, and shows that they have a much sharper set of software engineers than Apple.

For iDisk, I agree - it wanted to be what Dropbox actually is. The photo galleries are an issue - I liked the integration across iPhoto and the AppleTV as well as being able to easily share password protected full-resolution galleries. I know there are alternate services and I should probably take the time to look at flikr or one of the others (suggestions welcome). iCloud 'photo stream' doesn't do it for me, and iCloud's document sync even less so. I would have been happy to have one service from Apple that worked well and covered all of this, and it strangely seems that the 'fix' for what was broken was to strip out all features that I liked. That's definitely one way to address it.

Well, Apple just gave away it's schedule for iOS 6 and new iPhone. New service will come in September with new iOS and new iPhone, that's why it's extended.

Only the naive are thinking that the next generation iPhone will come out in June/July (around the time of the WWDC). It's barely a month away and we aren't seeing the avalanche of supply chain rumors that typically precede an imminent iPhone launch. But without a doubt, we will continue to field moronic theories about Apple's upcoming "iPhone 5" (despite the fact that the fifth-generation iPhone shipped in October 2011) coming in June.

So tedious.

You're right. Apple will announce new iCloud functionality when they introduce iOS 6 to the public, presumably in September. Legacy MobileMe services will be shut down at that time.

Apple will announce new iCloud functionality when they introduce iOS 6 to the public, presumably in September. Legacy MobileMe services will be shut down at that time.

I fully expect iOS 6 and the new SDK to be introduced at WWDC, just like last year, on June 11th, with the release of iOS 6 and the next iPhone to arrive in the Autumn. Just a few weeks before the release of the 6th gen iPhone and iOS 6 in the Autumn I expect another event to demo the new iPhones, and along with new iPods and hopefully new wireless accessories.

I also expect a demo of Mountain Lion. (So glad they aren't doing the two demos of OS X before the release anymore. That was tedious and almost completely a repeat.)